BlueHat Competition By Microsoft – To Hamper Cyber Attacks

A contest offering big money and named as BlueHat Competition has been kicked off at Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Microsoft launched the competition with the aim to promote the focus on development of innovative solutions to hamper increasing cyber attacks.

Instead of promoting discovery of individual, Microsoft is supporting the idea of developing defensive computer security to fight against all types of cyber attacks. Instead of paying attention and money for small bugs, Microsoft has come up with big prizes and a hope to inspire young hackers, security professionals and technical researchers to create a system for defending against all type of criminal cyber attacks.

The theme for the first year of this contest was preventing hacks exploiting computer memory vulnerabilities. BlueHat offered more than $250,000 in cash and other prizes. The entries will be evaluated by an internal panel of experts of Microsoft and the winners will be declared in next Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas next year.

Top submission in the contest will get $200,000 and a prize of $50,000 will be given to the second place. Third place will be eligible to use Microsoft services of worth $10,000. Although there are big chunks of money involved but Microsoft lead security strategist Katie Moussouris also said “Some of the value in this prize is beyond money; it is inspiring not just the current generation but the next generation.”

“We have found that some of our best defenders come from the opposite side of the security coin,” she added. To have an edge against potential hackers, we need a system developed by a mind thinking their way.

As the risk of attacks on private and government systems has increased to high extent, this step of Microsoft is truly admirable and yeah if we see the money involved, it’s a bit more than just inspiration. Find it @ http://www.physorg.com/

About the Author

Ravi+ - Co-Founder of IdleBrains. Software engineer by profession, a poet at heart and tech writer by passion. Loves sweet music and cricket. Admirer and follower of Sachin Tendulkar. Follows his hobbies as “TheGhost”. Visit the poet here.